Read this excerpt from chapter 2 of The Scarlet Letter . Meagre, indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such bystanders at the scaffold. On the other hand, a penalty which, in our days, would infer a degree of mocking infamy and ridicule, might then be invested with almost as stern a dignity as the punishment of death itself. Which best describes the purpose of the words “meagre,” “scaffold,” “stern,” and “punishment of death”?